Pinterest IS Making Money… …Off of YOU!

I’ve been watching Pinterest with fascination because of the massive appeal it has for certain demographics. It’s really clever because it is a graphical bookmarking site billed a social online pinboard that allows you to “organize and share the things you love.” Everyone expects that a popular site like Pinterest should be making money, but noticeably absent from the interface are any advertising blocks or any other promotional spaces.

It makes sense, though considering the findings posted on Digital Trends that Pinterest is converting shared links on the site to affiliate links. This is not surprising, as it seems one of the most logical ways to convert the user-generated content on the site into monetizable traffic. However, the interesting thing is that they don’t disclose anywhere on their site or their blog that they are modifying the links that members are “pinning” to their “boards”. Looking through their terms, copyright notice and privacy policy, the standard items are in place, but nothing about modifying the content uploaded to the site to generate income via affiliate relationships. What I’m curious about is how this fits into the FTC guidelines for disclosing affiliate relationships. Maybe it only applies to bloggers and only applies to those who blog about items provided via affiliate relationships.

Another interesting take on the subject comes from subprint, where the author concludes that Pinterest could monetize their greatest asset much better, which is the data they are acquiring on the likes, dislikes and interests of a very specific demographic. They have the opportunity to provide this data to advertisers and other interested parties, much like the profit model of PatientsLikeMe.

What do you think? Is Pinterest being sneaky or do they have the right to monetize user-submitted content in any way of their choosing without informing the members supplying the content? Sound off!